It's just the fae dogs, the magic ones--black dogs and hounds--that set me off.
Only when I am overcome with--" She bit her lip.
"Fear?" Samuel suggested, and she didn't answer.
She also had left off werewolves, I noticed.
"I am glad to see that your magic has returned," he said.
"You thought it was gone." She took a deep breath.
"Yes.
And for a while I was glad of it." She looked at me.
"And that has bearing on the present situation.
You are Samuel's friend, Mercedes?" "And mate of the local Alpha werewolf--Jesse's father," I told her.
I could hardly tell her that Samuel was single--that was a little too obvious.
I saw that it mattered to her that Samuel didn't belong to me.
"You were going to--" I was so caught up in matchmaking that I almost flubbed it then and there.
I shut my mouth and grabbed Jesse's hand.
"--help us find Gabriel." Jesse completed my sentence for me.
Ariana didn't move like a human at all when she came back to where we sat, with her chair in hand; she moved like a .
.
.
wolf, bold and graceful and strong.
Without a glance at Samuel, she sat down.
"Ask her about the thing the fairy queen wants," I told Jesse.
"Zee said she wants the Silver Borne," Ariana said.
"That is the object of power I built for my father--although it never quite worked as the one who commissioned it would have liked.
For many years I thought I had destroyed all my magic by making it." She closed her eyes and smiled.
"I lived as a human, except for my long life span.
I married, had children .
.
." She glanced at Samuel, who was looking over our heads and out the window.
His face was composed, but I could see the pulse beating fast in his throat.
Ariana continued her story quickly.